Totten
Korps: the moniker is German but the band is Chilean. Ultimately Chile is
spewing forth an incredible bunch of high-quality’s extreme metal bands, in
particular about the purest death metal. To name a few, I must mention
Pentagram Chile (obviously!), Demonic Rage, Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Diabolical
Messiah, the veterans Atomic Aggressor, and so on and so on forth, in an
endless death metal explosion. But, into this interminable list, there are the
Totten Korps, another band of veterans founded even in 1989 that, guided by the
guitarist Francisco Torres since the early days, split-up for a first time in
1994 after various demos to return to terrorize the nights of the mortal world
in 1998 releasing their long-awaited debut album in 2001. But, from here,
Totten Korps hadn’t released something new, just splits with old songs and
compilation dedicated to them. Finally, this silence was broken during December 2015 through a new fresh album titled “Supreme
Commanders of Darkness” and edited by the compatriot label Apocalyptic Productions. Released
originally on CD, it has been recently reissued on vinyl by the Swedish label
Blood Harvest. So, this is the third consecutive review about a release of this
fantastic label!

The reissue
of “Supreme Commanders of Darkness” is truly perfect to close this metallic
year at its best. This because Totten Korps plays death metal as it should be
through 10 devastating songs that offers very very much.

Firstly,
Totten Korps, obviously, possess that ultra-violence typical of the South
American bands so to bombard the listeners with an avalanche of hyper-fast
tempos (especially blast-beats) in a similar way to the Diabolical Messiah. In
my opinion, the most violent track of the album is “El Antiguo Maestro de las
Pestilencias”, which is also both the shortest one with its 3 minutes and half
and the only one to be sing in Spanish, that, for me, is a fantastic language for the heavy
metal music.

But, in
addition to the ultra-violence thanks also to the drummer Alejandro Arce, the
death metal of Totten Korps is very dynamic and nervous, hence the listeners
can be asphyxiated by insalubrious doom tempos also through numbers slower than
the usual like “Amarduk” (where there are some groovy passages) and,
especially, the conclusive “Tortured Souls from the Paths of Perdition”. This
means that the songs of these 4 demons are always surprising, also because the
band, showing excellent technical skills, is very able to mix the old school
death metal (Morbid Angel in primis) with the most modernist solutions like in
the guitars’ harmonies that opens the same “El Antiguo Maestro…”.

One of the
most peculiar and nice skills of the Totten Korps comes from the refined
guitarwork of Francisco Torres/Cristian Soto. In fact, there is need to say that
their riffing is always dense also because they have the rare tendency to overlap
riffs on riffs so to create a very embracing sound. Moreover, these 2 guysgives birth to always excellent and often
long solos which are sometimes melodic but in an evil way…and into a song like “Amarduk”
there is even an oriental solo! In other words, do you want something else
about the Totten Korps?

I say yes
because I must say also that the album is full of memorable moments! My favorite
one is into “Hastur’s Voice Echoes in Our Minds”, where, at a certain point,
there is a mephitic slowdown complete of solo followed by a freezing feedback’s
break and, thereafter…the assault restarts abruptly with painful blast-beats!

Said all
this, “Supreme Commanders of Darkness” is surely one of the better death metal
albums of 2015, also because it has everything: non-stop brutality, technical
skills, inventiveness, melody, dynamicity, excellent guitar solos, the full
growls of SadaX emphasized by some screams, and there is also a bit black metal
(like in “The Legacy of Leviathan (Shadows from the Depths)”) useful to add
darkness to the entire music. Practically, the only problem is that…I can’t
find a single fuckin’ flaw into this album haha!

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